William Doyle

In the following viewpoint William Doyle asserts that although the French Revolution had some negative consequences, such as increased governmental intrusion into personal lives, it ultimately benefited much of French society. According to Doyle, groups who gained economic, political, and social power included property owners, soldiers, Jews, Protestants, and middle- class professionals. Doyle also notes that slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue benefited from the revolution. Civil rights proponents active in the revolution called for the abolishment of slavery in all French colonies, and the French government complied in 1794. Ten years later Saint-Domingue became the independent nation of Haiti. Doyle is the chairman of the School of History at the University of Bristol in England.

Was . . . the Revolution worth it in material terms? For most ordinary French subjects turned by it into...